January 15, 2009

Methane And Microbes On Mars

ALIEN microbes living just below the Martian soil are responsible for a haze
of methane around the Red Planet, Nasa scientists believe.

The gas, belched in vast quantities in our world by cows, was detected by
orbiting spacecraft and from Earth using giant telescopes.

Nasa are today expected to confirm its presence during a briefing at their
Washington HQ.

Now hold on - when NASA confirms "its" presence", will "it" be methane or microbes? Methane is old news; in fact this whole story is old news. From the BBC in 2004:

Methane has been found in the Martian atmosphere which scientists say could be a sign that life exists today on Mars.

It was detected by telescopes on Earth and has recently
been confirmed by instruments onboard the European Space Agency's
orbiting Mars Express craft.

Methane lives for a short time in the Martian atmosphere so it must be being constantly replenished.

There are two possible sources: either active volcanoes, none of which have been found yet on Mars, or microbes.

Time will hang heavy until the NASA briefing. Actually, per Fox News I learn that time will hang heavy until 2PM:

American media outlets are not
yet reporting the story because they're honoring an "embargo," a
promise to not run a story until a designated time, in this case 2 p.m.
EST, when NASA is expected to hold a press conference. The Sun "broke"
the embargo, prompting other British papers to follow suit.

Large quantities of the gas - which on Earth is mostly produced by living
things - were recorded by three huge telescopes during a seven year study.
The level of activity was so great that at times it equalled the amount of the
gas released at some of the most methane-rich locations on Earth.

Scientists say that further investigation is necessary to determine whether
the gas - spotted in 2003 - was created by the biological processes of
creatures such as microbes, or from volcanic activity.

"Living systems produce more than 90 per cent of Earth's atmospheric
methane; the balance is of geochemical origin. On Mars, methane could be a
signature of either," Nasa said in a statement.

Europe's Mars Express probe picked up possible evidence of methane on Mars in 2004, but Nasa's latest discovery has been heralded as the strongest
indicator yet that the planet is able to support simple organisms.

The methane, which was detected alongside water vapour, could have been a
waste product from organisms called methanogens living in water beneath
underground ice, experts believe.

WASHINGTON
-- A team of NASA and university scientists has achieved the first
definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This
discovery indicates the planet is either biologically or geologically
active.

So how long before the left says that Mars once had 20 billion happy healthy and prospering people, but ignored global warming and look what happened? Oh and BTW if you don't buy into Gore's ponzi scheme the same thing will happen to us on or before next week.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=18410
Per above link to an "elderly" NASA article regarding Titan's methane,in order to assert or suggest that the martian methane is of biological origin, requires demonstration of enrichment for carbon 12 in the methane molecules; Titan's methane is predominatly carbon 13, a nonbilological source of carbon.

Don't make fun of the Sun. Some things are sacred.
As for the gas passing Martians, i hope they don't hitch a ride in Daddy's car on a day so cold he cannot open the windows. The poor man has suffered enough from that sort of thing.

I don't know about that. It's what we expect on Earth because Earth's biology preferentially absorbs 12C, and the relative change in concentration is pretty small.

The absolute declaration that these methane plumes must be abiotic seems to require (1) the assumption that Martian biology inevitably would have the same preferential characteristic as Earth's, (2) confidence that the difference isn't within measurement error for an instrument that is, after all, above the atmosphere and passing by at five or six km/s, and (3) some proposal for an abiotic mechanism that could put out that much methane for that long, since methane breaks down quickly in Martian conditions.

Why finding life on Mars maybe bad news for us:www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/06/mars-the-great-filter-and-extraterrestrial-life.
It's unlikely that a relatively rare form of Carbon that is seen to be predominant in abiotically derived organic molecules would become part of the basis for extraterrestial life forms in our solar system-Mars and Earth are virtual twins from a cosmic perspective. If you are going to argue for a carbon-13 based life form in our solar system, then Titan is the place to go. The Martian atmosphere is enriched for carbon-13.

“I think this is extremely strong evidence for current life on Mars,” said McKay, who works at Johnson Space Center.

“It doesn’t prove it. But, to me, that is very strong support for the microbial life theory that we have been promoting with evidence for a number of years.”

The new methane data, collected by NASA senior scientist Michael Mumma and other planetary scientists, found that concentrations of the gas varied greatly by location and season on Mars.

The primary plume they found contained about 19,000 metric tons of methane, which is comparable to the methane produced at the large hydrocarbon seep Coal Oil Point in California, where underwater bacteria produce methane by processing hydrocarbons.

Further studies during future missions to Mars are needed to determine whether the methane originates from biological or non-biological sources.

Although it is possible to produce methane through inorganic processes, those typically do not produce the concentrations of methane observed on Mars.

“These methane concentrations are an indicator that there might be life,” said Paul Cloutier, a Rice University astronomer who served as a principal investigator on the Mars Global Surveyor, a spacecraft that orbited, and collected data about Mars from 1997 to 2006.

“If methane were absent, you would be able to argue more forcefully there isn’t life on Mars.”

Cassini has mapped about 20 percent of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. Dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves.

Proven reserves of natural gas on Earth total 130 billion tons, enough to provide 300 times the amount of energy the entire United States uses annually for residential heating, cooling and lighting. Dozens of Titan's lakes individually have the equivalent of at least this much energy in the form of methane and ethane.

Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html

Granted not all is methane but I find it hard to believe that there would be more methane on Mars than either Earth or Titan.

If Martian methane is C-12 predominant then that approaches slam dunk evidence for ongoing life. If predominantly abiotic it could suggest an active crust which might harbor life.

Methane can indeed me made from non-biological sources, and the methane observed on Mars could indeed be from a non-biological source. Or it could be a fossil remnant from the formation of the planet that periodically escapes from the subsurface.

Mars has a "dead" core, not a hot molten core such as Mother Terra, and therefore has a much weaker magnetic field. Fact number one in which Mars is "not like Earth".
Mars is about 1/3 smaller, with a correspondingly weaker gravitational field, meaning it is harder to hold an atmosphere to sustain life. Fact number two in which Mars in "not like Earth".
Mars' mean distance from the Sun is about half again what Earth's is, meaning by a root mean square approximation, it receives about 1/4 the solar radiation (heating) from the Sun than Earth does. Fact number three in which Mars is "not like Earth".

There may indeed be some kind of bacteria under the surface that are creating methane, and there may indeed be a good reason to study the planet more closely. But this observation, in and of itself, proves nothing. It is a very interesting observation, but not more than that. Prudent and skeptical scientists should know better than to jump to this kind of conclusion. It is not substantiated.

So it could be just some faction within NASA trying to gin up enthusiasm for budget money to mount a manned mission to Mars. I'm all for that, but not under false premises.

FYI don't know if you all saw it but I saw an article a little while back on global warming in Reuters that talked about how Japan is going to put some some satelite up that will use some new technique to read temperatures in thousands of spots around the world, as compared to the only hundreds that we use now. That whould help solve the debate.